Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89

“Me. I ride for me.”

Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection
(Stovepiper Books Media, 443 pages, $24.43) is radical, and not in
political or mathematical terms. Rather, this is a surprisingly engaging
testament to the underground freestyle BMX circuit of the mid-’80s.

Aggro Rag is a
collection of 12 fondly remembered fanzines by the same name, with
notes and essays from original editor Mike Daily and other contributors.
Daily began the project as a high-school student in York, Pa., working
on it between 1984 and 1989. Born on mimeograph and Xerox machines, each
issue of Aggro Rag is more of a scrapbook than standard zine,
originally distributed at competitions and nationwide by Daily’s
neighborhood post office. The eclectic content includes everything from
music reviews and prolific interviews with up-and-coming riders to news
blurbs and how-to guides for performing the latest tricks, complete with
directions and photos.

The much-romanticized
zine is a lost art form obliterated by Pentium-enabled digital
publishing. Daily’s hodgepodge approach to the mini-mags may have helped
it hold up: AggroRag has the ragtag finesse of a well-done barspin, probably because of hands-on dedication so easy to skimp on in the Tumblr age.

The collection has
the tone you’d expect of kids whose sole pleasure in life seems to be
cruising around doing cherry pickers. “And how about when a total moon
babe moves in down the street?” Daily writes in an editorial about the
many uses for a BMX bike. “Your bike sure does come in handy when you’re
tryin’ to win her heart by cruising your scoot past her house standin’
on the seat and give her the peace sign with a rose clenched in your
teeth!!”

The
photos are mainly amateur action shots of Daily and his peers performing
flatland bike tricks. Other images include cartoons and candid shots of
Van Halen’s David Lee Roth meant to help retain the reader’s gaze when
bike photos fall short of gripping.

For all its
unpolished humor and bike-related jargon, the collection is brimming
with insights that further its appeal beyond the freestyle junkie. When
Daily tackles the role freestyle plays in society, one can tell he’s
taken time to consider how bikes help keep teenagers from doing
vandalism and drugs.

Ultimately, Aggro Rag’s
best quality is its subtext as a journal of Daily’s progression as a
writer and person, with writing and stories becoming more concise, vivid
and compelling with each issue. Daily went on to work for two national
BMX magazines and write two novels—the fact he’s not embarrassed by
something he photocopied at age 15 speaks volumes.